We have been getting to know the scientific calculator with Mastering the TI-30Xa Scientific Calculator: Augmented Intelligence for all 21st Century Student from Triad Math, Inc. It is a quick 25 lessons/video course that covers all of the keys and their uses of the TI-30Xa calculator. It's precise and to the point, covering new keys with every lesson. Starting with the very basic addition and subtraction all the way through to trigonometry.
I would have loved to have this course covered in high school. Instead, I had to stumble my way around the calculator trying to figure out what keys were, and basically ignoring the ones I had no clue what they did (which is most of them still to this day). Needless to say I have been enjoying looking over my boy's shoulder as he works on this and learning a few of the keys myself!
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| The workbook and calculator to help complete the online course. |
For this review, we received a workbook, TI-30Xa calculator, and access to the online course and videos. All of the components are pretty essential to completing this course. The calculator needs to be this model or one very similar as the course covers its specific keys. I'm not sure how closely other scientific calculators relate, but it seems that it would be easiest for any student to work with the same one. Although we received our calculator for free for the review, I looked it up to see how much it would be for us to purchase one, and it was in the $10 range, so pretty affordable and worthwhile to purchase.
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| This is the TI-30Xa that is used in the course. |
Once a student is ready to begin they need to login to the online part of Triad math to work their way through the lessons. The online part contains all necessary notes in pdf files, the pre-test, the lesson video, and the post-test. After the video is watched then it's time to practice what is learned in the workbook!
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| The Lesson 2 video online portion of the course. |
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| A completed lesson 2 exercise page. |
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| A page of notes from Lesson 7's video |
I had my 7th grader work through the first few chapters of this course. He found the first 2 lessons very easy, but after that, it starts into pre-algebra, which is about where he is at. Ideally, he'll be able to make it up to about chapter 13 before it gets into stuff that is too hard for him. That's when it hits the Algebra stage. Lessons 14-15 are the algebra stage. Lessons 16-20 are the trigonometry stage, and finally, the last 5 lessons (21-25) are a STEM portion. So, the beginning chapters of this book can be used for kids about 10 and up depending on their grasp of basic arithmetic. I am looking forward to working through the rest of the course with my 7th grader as he moves up in math and hoping it will help him to have this knowledge about calculators.
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